GeForce GT 420 vs Radeon R7 260X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R7 260X, which features a core clock frequency of 1100 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1625 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 896 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 420		50 Watts
Radeon R7 260X		115 Watts
	Difference: 65 Watts (130%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R7 260X should in theory be quite a bit superior to the GeForce GT 420 overall. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		104000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 420		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 75200 (261%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X is a lot (more or less 1000%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 420. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		61600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 420		5600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 56000 (1000%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R7 260X is superior to the GeForce GT 420, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		17600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 420		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14800 (529%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.